


you've seen me at my worst

by bumblegremlin



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, meet ugly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23738575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumblegremlin/pseuds/bumblegremlin
Summary: A collection of one-shots of Percy and Annabeth meeting each other in terrible ways.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	1. the last seat on the subway

**Author's Note:**

> If you think about it, does the "you drool in your sleep" scene count as a meet ugly?

Annabeth had had a long day.

Pretty much nothing had gone right since she woke up this morning. Her alarm didn’t go off. She burnt her toast. Some asshole in her building ran into her, so by the time she walked (late) into class today, she had a coffee stain hidden underneath her sweater, dark circles under her eyes, and very little motivation not to murder anyone. It only got worse from there, because the mansplainer in her design class felt particularly chatty during their lecture, and her history prof decided to spring an essay assignment on her. Even her lunch was disappointing. The caf ran out of the Wednesday special she got every week before she could get there.

By the time her classes were done, Annabeth was wondering why she had even decided to go to NYU for her degree anyway. Yeah, California had its flaws, but at least it was warm. And sunny. Annabeth could be on a beach right now, not dealing with the Manhattan subway system during commuting hours.

Annabeth swiped her metro card, feeling something stick to her shoe when she walked through the turnstile.

It was gum.

It was gum, fresh and strawberry pink and gross, squishing in between the tread on the bottom of her shoe and making a sticking sound every time she took a step.

_ AUGH! _ Annabeth wanted to scream. This day just got better and better. She was jostled around when she got on subway, cursing her existence and just wanting to get  _ home for fuck’s sake.  _ And then she saw it. A beacon of light in the darkness. An impossible miracle.

An open seat on the subway during rush hour.

Annabeth almost breathed out a sigh of relief before she saw him _.  _ A guy, about her age, looking at her seat right after she did. They made eye contact. Silently, she communicated,  _ don’t you fucking dare _ , but he was already moving. They went for it at the same time, but through some final fuck you from the universe, he ended up on the seat first, making her tumble into his lap.

He stared up at her, waiting for her to accept defeat and stand up.

Annabeth gritted her teeth. No. No, her day had been too awful and she was too miserable to bow out now like a dignified person. She didn’t care how much she sounded like a child when she said, “This seat was mine.”

“What?” The guy’s voice was flat. Incredulous.

She looked down at him and - oh, wow. She hadn’t gotten a good look at him before, but he was actually really cute. Hot, even. His hair was dark and unruly and made his green eyes stand out against his attractive face. He was definitely the kind of guy she would check out from across the subway, and now she was up close and personal, sitting in his lap. 

Annabeth knew she was blushing, but she forced herself under control. She was proving a point.

“I was going to sit in this seat,” she said. 

He made a strangled scoffing sound. “Well, I  _ am  _ sitting in this seat. I got here first.”

“But I was looking at it!”

The guy didn’t back off, even though she knew how intense she looked. “So was I!” he said angrily, voice rising. “I looked at it and then I got here first, so could you please get the fuck off me?”

“No!”

“What?!”

A bump jostled them around, but Annabeth held on tight, gripping the seat behind his shoulder and not letting herself be moved. They were causing a scene. She didn’t care. 

With her other hand, Annabeth jabbed at his chest. “You would not believe the day I have had. It’s been terrible, and the only thing  _ not  _ terrible about it was getting to sit in this seat. So move.”

“You are unbelievable,” he grumbled. “You seriously think you’re the only person having a bad day? I just got off a double shift at the worst job ever. I have been running around since 5 am and you’re telling me your day was worse? Get off.”

Somewhere in the middle of his spiel, the subway made a stop. People got on and off, an open seat becoming available a few people over. The guy didn’t notice, and Annabeth pretended she didn’t either. It wasn’t about just any old seat at this point, it was about the principle and she wasn’t going anywhere until she won this argument. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw an older man sit down in the open seat.

The car jostled as it moved again. Mindlessly, the guy brought his hand up to her leg, securing her in place.

“I got coffee spilled down my shirt this morning,” she told him. “It’s gonna stain.”

“Oh, yeah? My coworker called in sick last minute and my boss didn’t find someone to fill in for him, so I had to do two people’s jobs today.”

“Bradley in the front row went on for ten minutes explaining our syllabus to the  _ professor. _ ”

“I dropped my sandwich.”

“I stepped in gum.”

“Ew.”

He was so genuinely put off by that one that Annabeth almost laughed. She was dangerously close to smiling, so she forced a frown. 

“You need to move,” she said, very seriously.

“Not happening, lady.”

“I just proved that my day was terrible, which means that I get the seat.”

“Well, I just proved my day was worse -”

She scoffed at him. “Your day was not worse-”

“My day was worse because a cute girl is sitting on my lap right now and I can’t even enjoy it because she’s being a total asshole.”

Annabeth opened her mouth with a comeback, but found that she couldn’t say anything at all. The guy was looking at her, smug, but there was a blush creeping up on his cheeks. It matched the heat in her own face. She didn’t know how her day had gotten to this point, but she… wasn’t complaining now.

“Well,” she said. Her voice didn’t quite sound normal. “This cute girl has a number. And a name. I’m Annabeth.”

“Percy,” he grinned. 

She managed to add herself as a contact in Percy’s phone just in time before they reached her stop. She extracted herself from his lap, and right before the doors opened, he said her name. “Annabeth?” 

“Yeah?”

He was smiling, soft and a little hesitant. “My day’s not so bad anymore.”

She smiled back. “Mine either.”


	2. locked out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt "you’re my best friend’s sibling / my sibling’s best friend and we’ve never gotten along, so of course it had to be you to find me stuck outside my house naked even though we haven’t seen each other in over two years"
> 
> (in which jason and annabeth are siblings, and percy is jason's friend)

When Annabeth got her undergraduate degree and officially moved on to her masters, she had for some reason thought that her life was under control.

Apparently, she was wrong.

It turned out that receiving a diploma, moving across the country, and finding an apartment all on her own did not stop her life from being messed up enough to have landed her in this position. Undressed, and locked outside of her brother’s house in the middle of the night.

Bitterly, she remembered Jason’s one piece of advice before he’d left her house-sitting.

_ Watch out for the door, _ he’d said.  _ It locks on its own. _

Annabeth moaned pitifully and looked up at the open second story window. She contemplated whether or not she’d be able to scale the side of the house in the tiny bath towel she was wearing. The chances were low, but any effort was superior to being locked out all night. Jason wasn’t coming back from his trip until Monday, and his roommate-

Like a summoning, Annabeth heard someone scoff behind her.

She turned around slowly, knowing her luck, and frowned when she was met with the sight of-

“Percy Jackson,” she said, not at all pleased. “Why are you here?”

He lifted his eyebrows, amused. He was clearly trying very hard to ignore that she was almost naked, but not doing a great job. Annabeth forced herself not to shift uncomfortably under his gaze. 

“I live here.”

“I know that,” she said. “You’re supposed to be at a swim retreat.”

He shrugged. “We didn’t advance. The team came home early.”

Annabeth wanted to skip to the end of this conversation. Percy was Jason’s best friend, a year younger than her. He and Jason had been friends since high school, but he and Annabeth had never been able to get along while she was at home. Moving away for college, luckily, had reduced her Percy sightings significantly. She hadn’t seen him in two years.

Of course, now that she’d moved to their area, her and Percy’s first meeting in years would be  _ this.  _

He was looking at her expectantly, so she relented and explained, “I got locked out.”

Percy nodded, enjoying this too much. “In your towel, because…”

Annabeth sighed.

“I was about to take a shower,” she said, “and then I thought I heard Piper’s cat meowing, so I went downstairs to check on it. I saw something moving in the yard and thought it was the cat, and Jason told me it’s not allowed outside, so I went to get it. Turns out it was a bunny, the door locked behind me, and now I’m outside in a bath towel with no key, and the only person around is - stop laughing at me.”

“I’m sorry,” Percy said. “That’s just the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Just like that, Annabeth shut her mouth and decided that this is why she hated Percy Jackson. In the back of her mind, she knew it wasn’t. They didn’t get along because as teenagers, they had bickered. Over plans, over food, over who was right. Nothing that mattered, except that in high school, Annabeth had been  _ desperate  _ to prove herself. And Percy Jackson had never budged an inch for her, but he’d also never been one of the assholes who tore her down.

Maybe he’d learned to since then.

But then he kept talking. “Hey, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, digging his key out of his pocket. “I just mean, like, that’s something  _ I  _ would do. And I just always thought you were way smarter than me.”

And that was… Okay, that was something.

“What?”

He shrugged like it was no big deal, admitting the one thing that Annabeth would have killed to hear a few years ago.

“Well, yeah. You’ve always been the smartest person I know. I figured you knew that.”

Percy unlocked the door, and looked at her, standing frozen on the patio, like  _ are you coming? _

“I know how smart I am.”

This conversation had turned into something else very quickly. Percy looked like he was at a bit of a loss. He stood in the doorway, while Annabeth faced him, half-naked on the patio of a student house as her high school experience relived itself in her mind.

“I guess,” she said, “I’ve always known my own intelligence. I just needed other people to see it. And the only person who wouldn’t take that from me was you.”

“Really?” Percy said. For a second, he looked pretty upset. “Look, Annabeth, I know we used to fight a lot, but I never meant to make you feel like-”

“I know.” Annabeth laughed a little. “It just used to piss me off that I would get the grade and read the books and you didn’t care about any of that stuff, but we would argue and you would be  _ right  _ half the time. I was trying so hard to be the best and you just… didn’t care about that. You just kept matching me.”

“Damn,” Percy said finally.

“You were also really annoying most of the time.”

“Well, that’s just a given.”

“I mean, seriously, who picks a fight for two days about pineapple on pizza?”

“You do!” he grinned. “And I stand by my choices.”

The years old argument, once brought up, didn’t die down easily. Eventually, Annabeth got tired of standing around in her towel, and they went inside. It was the middle of the night, but they ordered a pizza anyway (half pineapple, half without). Annabeth forgot about her shower, Percy put on a movie, and they talked.

Just like that, it was back to high school. Except this time, Jason wasn’t there as a buffer. This time, the bickering sounded a lot more like conversation than arguing, and no one ended up pissed off.

It felt dangerously close to friendship.

It felt dangerously close to being the start of something new.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @katiegardener


End file.
